In this talk from Revolution Festival, Jack Halinski-Fitzpatrick - Socialist Appeal activist and manager of Wellred Books - introduces the revolutionary philosophy of Marxism: dialectical materialism.

As Marx famously stated: “philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point however is to change it.” In order to change the world, however, we need to understand how it works. And for that we need philosophy.

Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of change, recognising that nothing in the universe is static but in a constant motion, in a process of evolution. Nothing simply ‘is’, but is in a stage of becoming - of going beyond its limits to become something new. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus once profoundly noted: one can never step into the same river twice.

In the natural world, Darwin’s theory of evolution was - to Marx and Engels - a vindication of their philosophy. Human society, meanwhile, is emergent from the material world, and thus also operates dialectically. Hence, Marx and Engels explained that our current society - capitalism - is just one stage in a historical process; a stage that has now reached its limits.

Only with a firm grasp of dialectical materialism can we understand the capitalist system and its contradictions. And only by understanding capitalism can we fight to overthrow it.